When will Leonardo DiCaprio lighten up? It doesn't look like it's going to happen anytime soon. Asked recently if he would consider doing something besides the heavy dramatic lifting of recent years (see Gangs of New York, The Aviator, Blood Diamond, The Departed, Body of Lies, Revolutionary Road, Shutter Island, Inception and now J. Edgar), the 37-year-old actor responded with this to-the-point rebuttal: “Why would I want to do something I would consider a profound waste of time?" Alright, then.

Christopher Nolan gives the gift of another brainy blockbuster

'Inception' finds writer/director Christopher Nolan in familiar territory as his previous reality-bending works ('Memento,' 'The Prestige,' 'The Dark Knight'), and the result is something almost as thrilling to contemplate as it is to watch. Even if you now know a little about what 'Inception' is about, you don’t even know the half of it. Grade: A.

IMAX gem zips audience through vastness, beauty and colors of space

Leonardo DiCaprio effectively narrates this 43-minute IMAX 3-D journey into the farthest reaches of outer space. The film follows the Space Shuttle Atlantis on its 2009 rescue mission, and the eye-popping views of space shift into warp drive when the Hubble telescope substitutes for the IMAX camera lens to provide incredibly clear images of galaxies, stars and nebulae millions of light years away. Grade: B-plus.

Scorsese and DiCaprio score again with complex and engrossing mystery

Martin Scorsese's latest is a gorgeously stylized psychological thriller full of darkly lush horror that torments its obsessed protagonist. As a former World War II veteran and U.S. Marshal, Leonardo DiCaprio hits every psychological mark that Scorsese dynamically orchestrates against a vast metaphorical natural and unnatural setting. Grade: A-.

This is not the sentimental romanticism of the two lead actors' 'Titanic.' In fact, it is much harder-edged and much less compassionate than its director Sam Mendes' previous 'American Beauty,' which mixed humor and a hallucinatory dreaminess into its similar tragic theme. Grade: B.

Throughout David Ignatius’ 2007 novel Body of Lies, you can feel the potential for creating something ... deeper. While the surface markings were those of an age-of-terrorism espionage thriller, there were also hints of Mystic River author Dennis Lehane: the portrayal of a world in which moral decision-making was virtually impossible and the best a soul could hope for was to make the least immoral decision.